Man kills family after judge denies his wife a protection order

[RobJ]

@j9c

Does Judge Troy Daniel have any legal exposure here?

Probably not, some kind of judge’s version of qualified immunity.

@Professor59

If you have a protective order, and the person shows up at your house with a gun, police DO NOT have a responsibility to enforce the law

Because this is a civil issue, probably? What a load of horse pucky. The ‘remedy’ for the guy showing up with a gun is to sue him in court? Yeah, right. Not very helpful.

[Loren_Pechtel]

@chenille

Did you not notice how this case started as harassment and then escalated into violence? You can somehow be sure a measure against the first would not have given this poor family some options before that happened?

His recent gun purchase was evidence in the request. It was requested too late to do any good.

[BakerB]

I worked for a while at the family law courts in Chicago as the person who talked with people hoping to get such an order and drafting the paperwork. This was at a free law clinic so the victim would get assistance from a lawyer once the paperwork was finished. We were usually able to get the judge to grant the request. Perhaps, because the whole building was devoted to family law issues the judges saw more of the results of DV than judges in courts with a diverse case load. The stories were often brutal. There was also a space where people could file on their own if the clinic decided not to assist them for some reason-usually a background of criminal behavior-and those forms were a horrible barrier to anyone not having a higher education and some exposure to legalese.

[chenille]

Ah, well then. I’m sure that the failure to get a restraining order soon enough to matter has nothing to do with the fact that she couldn’t even get one after the gun was requested, and proves they would be useless to prevent that kind of escalation in general.

[Mindysan33]

I mean, why even have laws at ALL! /s

[DukeTrout]

@Loren_Pechtel

His recent gun purchase was evidence in the request. It was requested too late to do any good.

Really? His three victims came along to the gun shop and he shot them at the register?

Come on. So many things could have interrupted this guy from murdering his family, and a lot of them would have started from a protective order.

[Melizmatic]

[subextraordinaire]

@Kii

Freedom of movement is a fundamental right.

(Apparently, not if you’re pregnant.)

@Kii

Also, the reality is that a protective order restricts freedom of movement in a very minor way and the judicial system should be granting them more often.

[Jesse13927]

@Loren_Pechtel

the protective order isn’t magic, it’s completely useless against someone who will do a murder/suicide.

Ooh, ooh, and people would still use knives to commit crimes if we made guns illegal, so there’s no point in that either. /s

[smulder]

@Loren_Pechtel

isn’t magic, it’s completely useless

Well it is a well established principle, that whatever is not magic, must be completely useless